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hanitschak long comment regarding LOVE

First off I think rob get­ting inter­viewed on this helps us a bunch http://​www​.34st​.com/No sar­casm there either, upenn is very impor­tant in Philadelphia

Im actu­ally mak­ing a list of heads that I skate there with (that are stand­ing cit­i­zens, tax pay­ing, col­lege attend­ing /​ grad­u­ated, job & career hav­ing, lit­tle kid men­tor­ing while we hap­pen to be shred­ding there, NOCRIMECOMMITTING while we hap­pen to be shred­ding there dudes.

And I think we should all just man up and bang out a typed page or two, three, etc. about some­thing that’s hap­pen to us there recently, neg­a­tively by the cops. (I think we all got that covered)

And how usu­ally most of the peo­ple who are there (non skate­board­ers) think skat­ing there is cool, shit peo­ple from all over the world for the most part are usu­ally like “hey you guys are get­ting kicked out? ” as were run­ning into the parkway!

And we should get that shit together, quickly mind you and con­tact all our media out­lets, a sim­ple list needs to get made of who knows who in what media (ie; news­pa­pers, TV sta­tions, mags, actual city offices!, etc).And we should get it to them in a seri­ously orga­nized form quickly!

They can park a cop at love for the sum­mer. But the arti­cle that came out recently about the parks com­mis­sioner, says that he is going to take some time (at least the summer/​fall) and fig­ure out what to ulti­mately do with love. That means their not going to straight demo that bitch!But the quicker and more orga­nized the media knows about all the shady shit going on the better!

I per­son­ally think two issues are huge involv­ing the whole thing with loveWe have two major good issues on our side.#1The cop shit, I don’t need to go any fur­ther every­one can cover a page as men­tioned on that. When I heard the offi­cer said he wanted to just keep going with the tazer and kill some­one I fig­ured id try to write this shit, I like life What Sdot said above is sooo true a cop can shoot you by acci­dent. Or get you run over! I am not try­ing to die while Im get­ting my back­lip on! , or have to call out of work cause I got arrested doing some­thing we all do cause its pos­i­tive and were all pretty good at it. the alter­na­tive of being piles or the lit­tle groms who shred there becom­ing fat assess instead of being healthy and skat­ing. And the bot­tom line is that all over our city crimes are being com­mit­ted and a cop prob­a­bly should be check­ing up on that I’d hope?And #2With all those straight will­ing home­less peo­ple along jfk blvd. ?!? WTF (that shit makes my heart and brain hurt at the same time when I see it) As I recall all our favorite lines from the past usu­ally showed that area being pretty mel­low and lookin all nice when the lens went by some­one doing an ill trick on one of those ledges. That area in par­tic­u­lar is a fuck­ing eye­sore now, and our govt. , major trans­port hub, city attrac­tions, etc are housed right next door to it !I seri­ously see the worst shit in the entire city when I cruise through that side of the park. You guys all know. As I try to think of spe­cific instances, uhm , oh wait, that mur­der, oh that was last year, oh she was home­less, see how that got for­got­ten about pretty quick , right?. And the drugs, and over­all hor­ri­ble shit going on right there for everyone’s first glance at our down­town is not a good impres­sion for all those tourist com­ing through. us skat­ing, peo­ple watch­ing, peo­ple actu­ally enjoy­ing the park and us?

I per­son­ally think if the right peo­ple heard these argu­ments it’s a no brainer.

My homie Feldlt recently said to me jok­ingly while look­ing at an ariel photo of Love “whatchu think this place was meant for, us skat­ing or a ufo landing”

Well? WTF, the guy who designed the place (r.i.p. Bacon) was so psy­ched to see kids skat­ing his park. Right?

That place is just ooz­ing to much good­ness skate­wise amidst all the bull shit going on that we gotta give it a shot. Right?

Get ahold of Scott Kipp, and gather the writ­ten work of SAN. A lot of peo­ple had good ideas but no one wanted to do the work. We made a dozen pre­sen­ta­tions to the city when Street was in office. A lot of good writ­ing and a mixed use plan has been drawn up. The city even turned down a mil­lion dol­lar dona­tion from DC shoes. If you guys want to try again, to legal­ize skat­ing at love your tak­ing a chance, but it looks like this might be the right time. However point­ing out how hor­ri­ble the cops are might not help you. Pay atten­tion to what has been done, it can only help.

Brian is not jok­ing, the ’Green store’ basi­cally lived from us and the C.C.P. stu­dents, includ­ing, WAWA, Starbucks, and god knows all of the street ven­dors. What per­cent of the cities tourism was directly effected by SKateboarding tourism?! Jake is fully right too! When I got locked up for run­ning back in 2000, THEYPULLEDOUTONME!!! (I had 2 cops point­ing guns at my face for rid­ing my skate­baord!!! I wasent’ even in the park I was com­ing down JFK and they rolled up the wrong way on 15th and jumped out, guns drawn… guess I can look like a men­ac­ing guy with a skateboard/​ weapon, huh?) Skateboarding ain’t that seri­ous of a crime, or is it?! What ever the case, I miss ya’ll and the park and when I touch down on US soil again, I am try­ing to skate there again, just like back in the days… Here is some stuff I wrote about it the other week on my shop blog with a clip from Mr. Hanitschak http://​ptnc​shop​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​s​e​g​w​a​y​-​s​u​r​g​e​o​n​.​h​tml

Brian is not jok­ing, the ’Green store’ basi­cally lived from us and the C.C.P. stu­dents, includ­ing, WAWA, Starbucks, and god knows all of the street ven­dors. What per­cent of the cities tourism was directly effected by SKateboarding tourism?! Jake is fully right too! When I got locked up for run­ning back in 2000, THEYPULLEDOUTONME!!! (I had 2 cops point­ing guns at my face for rid­ing my skate­baord!!! I wasent’ even in the park I was com­ing down JFK and they rolled up the wrong way on 15th and jumped out, guns drawn… guess I can look like a men­ac­ing guy with a skateboard/​ weapon, huh?) Skateboarding ain’t that seri­ous of a crime, or is it?! What ever the case, I miss ya’ll and the park and when I touch down on US soil again, I am try­ing to skate there again, just like back in the days… Here is some stuff I wrote about it the other week on my shop blog with a clip from Mr. Hanitschak http://​ptnc​shop​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​s​e​g​w​a​y​-​s​u​r​g​e​o​n​.​h​tml

yeah nugget, good stuff , lets link up to get some of that stuff from s.a.n. orga­nized ( writ­ings, plans, mate­ri­als, etc)i do agree with what your say­ing about com­ing at it with the cops and all. i just think that if peo­ple saw that they are there just chill­ing, kick­ing us out and over look­ing all that other gen­eral trife­ness over there. it would start some dis­cus­sion i think for our benefit.

yeah nugget, good stuff , lets link up to get some of that stuff from s.a.n. orga­nized ( writ­ings, plans, mate­ri­als, etc)i do agree with what your say­ing about com­ing at it with the cops and all. i just think that if peo­ple saw that they are there just chill­ing, kick­ing us out and over look­ing all that other gen­eral trife­ness over there. it would start some dis­cus­sion i think for our benefit.

Good job guys… Big ups Jake…getter done.. I’ll come skate love if i know that some cop doesn’t want to kill me for shreding..Had to many guns pulled on me in the past.. me not likey likey.. SUPPORTTHESEGUYS…GETLOVEBACK..

yeah nugget, good stuff , lets link up to get some of that stuff from s.a.n. orga­nized ( writ­ings, plans, mate­ri­als, etc)i do agree with what your say­ing about com­ing at it with the cops and all. i just think that if peo­ple saw that they are there just chill­ing, kick­ing us out and over look­ing all that other gen­eral trife­ness over there. it would start some dis­cus­sion i think for our benefit.

I’d like to help out in any efforts to make this hap­pen. If there’s any­thing I can do to help you guys out, please let me know. My loy­alty is to my friends and all the kids that skate Love Park first and fore­most before any politi­cian or police officer.

as far as brian and jake L’s point, i think they know how much money we spend. ear­lier this year feldt, piff, and i got hemmed up one night and as they drove us to the sta­tion i made the point to the offi­cer “if you hon­estly don’t want us here, why hasn’t it been skate stopped like city hall?’ he replied, “we know how much money you kids spend when you come here, or more specif­i­cally kids from other areas. even if we chase you, you’re still gonna try and still gonna spend money.” i thought that was pretty crazy, it’s all a big plan. they want our money to pump the econ­omy up down there, then they want the money that they’ll get from us when they catch us.

OK.….first of all I never said LOVE was tran­si­tional skat­ing, the guy from UPENN mis-​​quoted me. I said LOVE is street skat­ing and FDR is tran­si­tional skat­ing, but he has no idea what I’m talk­ing about any­way. I even con­tacted the dude about that stuff and he didn’t re-​​edit it. The dude who inter­viewed me has no idea about skat­ing; he is a reg­u­lar stu­dent who has never been on a board. Anyway, Jake is right on all this. With the city being so deep in debt we need to orga­nize and show them that LOVE is a viable resource for skaters, busi­nesses, and the rest of the city’s population.

I know you didn’t say it like that, Rob. The writer totally has his facts crooked. Ed Beacon stepped on the board in 2002, not 2005. We all know that. Your “kick­flip” was prob­a­bly some other flip trick, right? Still, the writer’s inten­tions are good. I want to help the cause, but I never skate Love. What can I do, write a song about it?

Getting together as a group and talk­ing face to face would get the ball rolling. I want to remind you all that SAN tried really hard, got dis­cour­aged and lost momen­tum. The momen­tum got lost partly due to “too many ideas.” If you want LOVE Park specif­i­cally, stick to that as your only plan. You need peo­ple who are smart, can write, can design graph­ics and art, can run a web­site, can speak with out curs­ing, and who can ded­i­cate their time regard­less of not being able to skate as much, work mak­ing them tired, fam­ily prob­lems, and so on… You need some­one who will lead your group. I’m down to con­tribute my con­nec­tions to the work we’ve already done, but the cause needs a new younger face to lead. Oh by the way, remem­ber this site? It’s got tons of info stored includ­ing a peti­tion from all around the world. http://​www​.ushis​tory​.org/​l​o​v​e​p​ark

dif­fer­ent mayor, dif­fer­ent park set up, newer kids skatein at love, start up another peti­tion, have another rally, might have a dif­fer­ent deci­sion now that skate­board­ing is so main stream these days.. i duno, thats my two cents, but im down to help in any way

im 100% with you jake. any­thing you pos­si­bly need give me a heads up, when need to orga­nize and start cam­paign­ing to make LOVE legal. we need to start mak­ing posters, get­ting in with the news­pa­pers, radio, etc. if ron eng­lish could cam­paign against joe camel (camel ciggs old car­toon char­ac­ter) and get them to get rid of him then we can do the same. too many times have we been chased out just to see bums fight­ing and shoot­ing up. lets get on this

I still have the design file for that cat­a­log but the only cat­a­log I have left that’s printed is auto­graphed by Tony Hawk… it’s a keeper. I could eas­ily share the work I did to help put together another one.

im down too!! kalis said it rite “and i guar­an­tee you if you ask any of the stores up and down here to ban skat­ing at love park they woud say NOPE” for real what bad things are we doing! were helpin the city and keepin things on point at love!

I was rid­ing my bike by there one day and some home­less crack­head had his pants down and his crack buddy hold­ing him up while he had some hot snakes out the butt (com­mon thing with crack use I am told). This was broad day­light with tourists, fam­i­lies and busi­ness­men walk­ing right by… the cops just let that hap­pen? Teach Obama how to kickflip

I am inter­ested in help­ing out and I may be able to lend some rel­e­vant skills if you need it . Have you guys decided how to get started yet by sched­ul­ing a meet­ing of some sort? I guess I will check back here peri­od­i­cally and see if the com­ments men­tion anything.

I am inter­ested in help­ing out and I may be able to lend some rel­e­vant skills if you need it . Have you guys decided how to get started yet by sched­ul­ing a meet­ing of some sort? I guess I will check back here peri­od­i­cally and see if the com­ments men­tion anything.

Hey Greg Lang, if you want to trade emails (i dont want to post an address on here due to spam bots) visit my web­site and go to the INFO page and com­ment on the form. I will get your email, write you back and try to orga­nize a list to make this first meet­ing hap­pen. Anyone inter­ested can do that if the would like. Scott from Exit, can you help us set up a place to meet??? My web­site is http://​www​.skt​nrd​.com

Steve from Exit, not Scott… my bad. Just so you all know, this type of stuff is work. I don’t even skate Love any more, can’t run fast enough. Someone else has to be pas­sion­ate enough to get the work done, or else your just post­ing com­plaints on the internet.

To every­one post­ing com­ments say­ing you are inter­ested in get­ting involved in all of this, if you leave a fake email address when you post, I can’t really get in touch with you directly. I’m not going to ever do any­thing with your email addresses when you com­ment other than per­son­ally send you a mes­sage to dis­cuss things off of this site.

I always thought the email was to ver­ify you are who you say you are. I guess an IP addy does the same thing. I want to help, but I really don’t know what I can do, seri­ously, other than to write a song about it. I get frus­trated in debates. I was impressed with how well Nugget han­dled that Logan’s Square yup­pie at that meet­ing back in 2005. I would’a just got­ten flus­tered, huffed, and told her to go fuck her­self. I could do man­ual labor, no pun intended with the word man­ual. I sup­pose I could lick envelopes… oh… so… sensually.

I would like to remind every­one that back in 2001 at all the meet­ings before they put the grass and planters in at Love, the Franklins Paine peo­ple were all for the full on ban­ning and re-​​design of the park, actu­ally try­ing to work with the city to STOP skaters from going their so they could have more of a rea­son to build a park in their own name and declare them­selves heroes. I was their, I remem­ber. wheres the park? 8 years later. you lost steam after you helped put the final nail in the cof­fin, and now it doesn’t affect any of you because you don’t skate any­more any­way. wheres all the money you thieves got donated from the cor­po­ra­tions? Mountain Dew gave you money right? Tony Hawk did too. He said him­self in an inter­view that he gave you guys money and he had no idea where it went. Maybe it went to the $100,000 skatepark design, made by a ROLLERBLADER, THATLOOKSJUSTLIKELOVEPARKANYWAY. what a big pathetic scheme you guys ran. did you get your glory?

Zeb, I remem­ber when this was all going down. I went to SubZero to talk to you and Shane when you had a sign in the win­dow that said pretty much the same thing you just posted above and it was not true. FPSF never sup­ported the ban­ning of LOVE. The city paid for a design. The archi­tec­ture firm had to hire at least 5 other firms for engi­neer­ing, land­scape, project man­age­ment, and so on. That’s where the city design money went. No one got rich. It is the way the city run’s projects. FPSF has been doing more. The skatepark going up in Kensington is close to done. The Patrick Kerr Memorial park up in Roslyn is close to done. FDR has had a range of improve­ments funded by FPSF. And FPSF still has grants in the bank wait­ing for a huge spon­sor for Schuylkill River Park. That’s where the money went and is still going.

not to bud in, but it took 8 years to build kens­ing­ton, roslyn park, and fix up fdr? and still hardly any signs of con­struc­tion to the main park plan in cen­ter city? and how are they earn­ing money back to this project, threw there spon­sors? sounds like a ton of money being thrown around there..shouldn’t take that long to fix and build stuff..im still confused..

what­ever you need to do to make your­self feel bet­ter brian, its cool. I know what was said and I know where your loy­al­ties were. yeah I made a sign say­ing that same thing and I’ll tell any­one that wants to lis­ten. you ben­e­fit­ted from the redesign of Love Park and made no effort to hide it. at a cru­cial time in the his­tory of Love Park, you couldn’t have cared less. you only cared about this skatepark that was merely a polit­i­cal show by the city to make the pub­lic think they cared about skate­board­ers. any­one that can see past their own nose could see that skatepark was never going to hap­pen. I didn’t say any­one got rich, what I’m say­ing is what you were doing was detri­men­tal. FDR improve­ments? I’m sure the legions of south philly bmx­ers and 20 or so drunk dag­gers are thank­ing you right now, but I’d rather risk get­ting tazered.

the bot­tom line was and still is, do you want to skate at a skatepark or do you want to skate at Love Park? franklins paine and all of its sup­port­ers want to skate at a skatepark, because they are too old or too lazy or too scared to skate in the real world, they need a fence around them with rules and par­ents and soda machines and hel­mets and lit­tle kids every­where, or its sup­port­ers are just igno­rant to the fact that the sec­ond a skatepark is built in the city is the same sec­ond Love is so impos­si­ble to skate you might as well be try­ing to skate the com­cast build­ing. and like I said, 8 years later and what is there? noth­ing except one attempt at a do it your­self skatepark that can accom­mo­date 10 peo­ple com­fort­ably at most, and alot of grass and planters in the way at Love Park. thanks nugget you sure showed me whats up

Zeb, I’m not try­ing to show you whats up. Sorry for com­ments other peo­ple put up. I’m not hold­ing on to any loy­alty to any­one other then skate­board­ing. Love is still skat­able. The only rea­son why I got on this series of threads was because peo­ple wanted to blow out the fact that a cop showed his gun. If dudes do that sort of thing, you may loose this oppor­tu­nity to skate LOVE all together. Sorry about get­ting older. I keep try­ing to stop it from hap­pen­ing, but noth­ing seems to work.

Ryan, Kensington took 1 year to get started and may be com­pleted this sum­mer. You can thank Jesse Clayton for run­ning that project, with out any pay. Roslyn took 7 years to fund raise, in the sub­urbs, with lit­tle sup­port and started con­struc­tion some time last year and may also be done by fall. You can thank the shop Final Boarding for keep­ing that fire burn­ing. Projects take sup­port to hap­pen, not hate. Just point­ing out the facts.

so since you had noth­ing to do with this skatepark in kens­ing­ton, what you are say­ing is in the past 8 years, after you helped mor­tally wound Love Park, all you have to show us in return is a skatepark in the sub­urbs? and you aren’t even tak­ing the credit for that so what the fuck have you done here for the skaters of philadel­phia? NOTHING

Not sure where this is going. Did not know this was all about me. Just try­ing to respond to your com­ments. When I got involved there was no one fight­ing for LOVE no one fight­ing to get a park built. I tried to help rally peo­ple, donated hun­dreds of hours of my time to this. I went to meet­ings with the city, like 30 meet­ings where I showed draw­ings and pho­tos of street spots and got them to under­stand what street skat­ing was. The last time we let the city design a park we got the foun­da­tion for FDR.

So I heard what skaters had to say, ran com­mu­nity meet­ings, tried to fight to incor­po­rate what peo­ple were say­ing, the peo­ple who actu­ally showed up. The park is the only design on earth like it, like LOVE, free pub­lic space that is good for skat­ing. The fact that it is not built has every­thing to do with fund rais­ing. FPSF has a new web­site launch­ing that hope­fully will inform every­one. Zeb, you wanna call me out and say this is all my fault, awe­some. I really don’t care. I know what I did and it was fight for skaters, not against. Seriously, what could I pos­si­bly gain? Try doing some­thing pro­duc­tive, you will quickly find out its work. This is not work, this is easy, post­ing, talk­ing smack.

im pretty sure zeb is more pro­duc­tive in actu­ally skat­ing, then any­one help­ing to build a skatepark that’ll fuck up down­town skat­ing. he’s been holdin down down­town, pretty much longer then any­one else. use to see him shov­elin snow out of city hall to be able to skate. you could build an iden­ti­cal love skatepark, but it still wont be love.

hey zeb, thanks for reply­ing.. yeah i was con­fused on why its take­ing so long.. i think i get it now, about the “sup­port makes things hap­pen”, makes sence.. i feel it would be cheaper to fix love park and city hall up if it were legal to skate there, and still have a ton of money for the main park near the art museum.. prob not gonna hap­pen, but build­ing a ton of skate parks isnt going to help much ither.. and im not hate­ing on it, believe me, more places to skate the bet­ter, but im just thinkin about spots with his­tor­i­cal back­round that mat­ter more to, thou­sands of peo­ple.. why not fix the small stuff and build that park near the museum and use the extra money to hold events and shit.. just my two cents.. think­ing out loud here

It’s funny how I heard nobody is get­ting rich, but the already rich board mem­bers on franklins paine have been get­ting paid for the past 5 years. Nick Orso and Jaime Elfent both get 70,000 dol­lars a year. So can you explain the miss­ing 700,000 dol­lars? Or is this just another conspiracy?

This is so bor­ing. I wish I never even responded. I feel like telling every­one how my cat talks and I can make my self invis­i­ble. I’m hav­ing lunch with Opra tomor­row and she’s gonna switch flip the LOVE gap, but only if we never build any more parks. Way to com­ment with out iden­ti­fy­ing your selves. I’m over this post. Peace.

shouldnt’ve decided to plan a skatepark so close to cen­ter city. you gotta be fuckin retarded to think that build­ing a skatepark down the street from love wouldn’t hurt down­town skate­board­ing… fdr heads, you already have your shit. who the hell needs a 7 mil­lion dol­lar skatepark? is this south­ern cal­i­for­nia all of a sud­den? east coast skate­board­ing… in the streets, pushin for miles. munic­i­pal is still ban­gin. love is still ban­gin. dudes like zeb, b-​​dougs, brit, jake, killin it down­town standin up for philadel­phia skateboarding.

it’s been about a year since the kens­ing­ton project started and will prob­a­bly be done in a few months, with­out THAT much help from franklin’s paine. here’s an idea… fuck the art museum skatepark, take the money you got, take it to local com­mu­nity parks through­out the city, build some banks, ledges, quar­ter­pipes, flat bars, what­ever and help build up philadelphia’s com­mu­ni­ties. how sick would it be if you cvould just skate down to the end of the block, whether its in s. philly, fair­mount, by the art museum, old city, what­ever, and ses­sion a mar­ble block on some smooth ground. they’ve been doin it in europe for years… lets fuckin catch up here. already wasted mad peo­ples money

I know I haven’t done shit to help this skatepark thing but fuck, $6 mil­lion on a skatepark is fuck­ing insane and bor­der­ing on uncon­scionable, pri­vate fund­ing or pub­lic, union or non-​​union. Denver was $1.5m, Louisville and Kettering around $2.5m. All are at least 10,000sq. feet big­ger than the Paine site. Six mil­lion dol­lars bet­ter buy the best fuck­ing skatepark of all time, ital­ian mar­ble ledges, hov­er­boards, and a $3million pile of coke. And when is this shit get­ting built any­ways? According to the web site FPSF got $1m from the city and the tax records from 04 – 06 show around $50,000. We’d love to hear to the con­trary, but why should we assume that FPSF is any closer than $4 – 5 mil­lion dol­lars and another 5+ years from done? http://​nccs​dataweb​.urban​.org/​P​u​b​A​p​p​s​/​s​h​o​w​V​a​l​s​.​p​h​p​?​f​t​=​b​m​f​&​a​m​p​;​e​i​n​=​2​0​1​0​2​0​630

Helping to run a business/​organization, sway­ing public/​political opin­ion, and rais­ing funds is actual hard work. “Holding down” Love park is not. Investing hun­dreds of hours of your per­sonal time for the poten­tial ben­e­fit of every­one else is self­less. Crying how you’re unhappy with the results of those count­less hours of work some­one else put in, when never hav­ing actu­ally helped your­self, is self­ish. Trying to blame Brian for these prob­lems is igno­rant at best and bor­der­line retarded at worst. This is busi­ness. This is finance. This is pol­i­tics. Just cause you ride a skate­board doesn’t mean you have to act like a bunch of kids cry­ing and point­ing fin­gers. Grow up. This post started out pos­i­tive and has since (as typ­i­cal) turned shitgears.

If you want to place blame, place blame on the Non-​​Skaters who were involved with SAN and Franklin’s Paine. Also, place blame on those fake-​​politicians who were try­ing to gain name recog­ni­tion by “embrac­ing” the love park issue. They’re still around, too: http://​young​in​volved​phila​.org/

Why is there so much fin­ger point­ing and shit? It’s not help­ing. It really isn’t. Holding Nugget, Norso and those dude solely respon­si­ble? Get the fuck outta here. Politics are pol­i­tics. Truth be told, Philadelphia beau­racrats could care LESS about skate­board­ing than the bums that sleep there. Rally all you want, go to meet­ings, but you and I BOTH know that in the end the city of Philadelphia is gonna do what they want. Yeah, 8 years is a long time to wait for any­thing, but that’s the way shit goes. We may not be get­ting love park back on a sil­ver plat­ter, but if ANYTHING skat­able gets put up in the city…cheers to that. SKate what you got.

I’m just as bummed as any­one for what’s going on with love. It’s depress­ing for me to go there, because I used to skate there back when it was good. Back when peo­ple like Action Matt, Dave &DGK were hold­ing it down. If I’m down there, it’s rare. I’m glad to see dudes like Zeb & B-Doug’s still hold­ing it down there. But damn, out of all my years of skate­board­ing in Philly, I had no idea that Love Park was the end all be all rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Philadelphia skate­board­ing. Last time I checked, all of Philadelphia skate­board­ing didn’t just exist in JFK plaza. Chill people..Work together.

Thanks dfi­ant. If any­one is upset over my work (or lack their of), I apol­o­gize. Nothing means more to me then skate­board­ing in Philadelphia. Most of us feel the same and read Haveboard because of it. I am going to try my best to do some­thing about the Schuylkill River project. And I promise to always tell you the truth that I am made aware of. As far as why this post started, Legalizing LOVE needs some lead­er­ship. Any shit talk­ers want to grab the mic, do it. I really can’t think of a bet­ter way to end this thread and start a new one.

Sorry for that rant.…first time post got a lit­tle car­ried away. Passion is a part of sk8ing and I defi­nately let my pas­sion for it get a hold there. Just say­ing reg­is­ter to vote and they will take you seri­ously. I apol­o­gize for call­ing you all fucks, and lit­tle girls. That was wrong, although if you read the thread it can come off like that.

Sorry for that rant.…first time post got a lit­tle car­ried away. Passion is a part of sk8ing and I defi­nately let my pas­sion for it get a hold there. Just say­ing reg­is­ter to vote and they will take you seri­ously. I apol­o­gize for call­ing you all fucks, and lit­tle girls. That was wrong, although if you read the thread it can come off like that.

One thing ive real­ized is that if you want to change some­thing its upon you to make it hap­pen. No one is gonna fight 4 you. The peo­ple skat­ing love are puttin up with some BS, jake wants to orga­nize and thats the only way to make progress. im doing some­thing to get what i want, no hid­den agenda no BS. If u think build­ing a park is bad for skat­ing in philly your one of the few. peo­ple skat­ing love is impor­tant because there not just fold­ing, there keep­ing it alive, tak­ing what they want, puttin up with the shit to get it, hold­ing it down! Decide whats impor­tant to you, orga­nize, put in some time and GETWHAT U WANT. Its an invest­ment in our com­mon future because it what we care so much about. im get­tin mine are you get­tin yours?

“Holding down” Love park is easy? since when has tryin to skate love been easy? spend­ing hours skat­ing or try­ing to skate what you want to skate is ded­i­ca­tion. giv­ing up, to give into only being able to skate a fuck­ing skatepark is easy.

Skate what you got. If you got Love…skate it..If you got a park…skate it. The scene is what you make it. I got sneak­ers older than half the peo­ple who claim to “hold it down” at Love. Truthfully, I don’t care. It’s like hear­ing the same song remixed by a dif­fer­ent artist. Skateboarding is what you make it. I’ll skate any­where. If the ses­sion is going down…count me in. I love Love Park just as much as any­one else, but there’s plenty out there to shred. I know this sounds crazy, but skate­board­ing is kinda fun when you can skate some­where with­out get­ting taz­ered, locked up, or beaten up.….but maybe that’s just me.

I am point­ing my fin­ger at franklins paine. not brian in par­tic­u­lar he just hap­pened to be the voice of the orga­ni­za­tion back then. brian, this is not per­sonal you should already know that. also I didn’t mean for this to be a piss­ing con­test about who holds down Love that means noth­ing to me. but you want to say this is pol­i­tics and busi­ness and all that, but look what jesse did with­out all that bull­shit, in about a year. you guys have been at this for 8 years and already got a nice piece of land donated to you and all you have to show for it is a sign and a web­site, and a whole lot of wasted time and money. doesn’t that say some­thing to you? like maybe your orga­ni­za­tion is a mis­er­able fail­ure and should be ran by more qual­i­fied peo­ple or just dis­solved entirely? another thing can some­one address wet blan­kets ques­tion? why does it cost 6 mil­lion dol­lars when amaz­ing parks are being built all over the world for a frac­tion of that?

I’ psy­ched to see that writ­ting for a half hour one night about some­where i go pretty much every­day would start up this much dis­cus­sion. FIRSTOFF.… i am sure there are some truths to what nugget and oth­ers say f.p. did pos­i­tively. BUT.… im pretty sure zeb aint pulling all of that info out of his ass. i’ve known that dude longer than any­one that wants to leave a com­ment after this, he is highly edu­cated and speaks the truth. instead of all the bick­er­ing, lets actu­ally fig­ure out what was done pos­i­tively and neg­a­tively and learn from it and take it into this next stage of try­ing to get this spot back, NOTBUILDINGNEWONES (new spots cost $ , already exsist­ing spot gen­er­ate $ , another no brainer! im not done yet .….…

Thanks Zeb for clear­ing that up. Odiously, I can take a men­tal beat­ing for skate­board­ing. Your pas­sion is a gift, don’t give up. I went to an FP meet­ing a few weeks ago for the first time in years. (this all has such amaz­ing tim­ing) They are launch­ing a new web­site soon (i was told). I feel that some sort of clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion on their progress and need for spe­cific help has not been announced. We all deserve the info and the updates. I have an idea of how I can help, if they will let me. Can you hear me FPSF board? Back to LOVE, here is the ques­tion, if any of you are seri­ous, who will step up and act as a leader and a voice for the Free LOVE cam­paign? Will it be Zeb? Will it be Jake? Seriously, it can’t be some over­weight dude (ahem) who lost 360 flips years ago…

One major thing i am con­fused over: what exactly is the dif­fer­ence between san and franklins pain.… nugget please explain this to me. not being a smart ass , i seri­ously don’t know. GONZO hit the nail on the head, non skaters rep­re­sent­ing skaters is such a bad look. i kinda wana know a lit­tle more about who gets paid what to actu­ally “work” for frain­klins paine it seams like the peo­ple who really do some­thing for the orga­ni­za­tion are the peo­ple who dont even get paid by them. i am work­ing on how i can get a space thru my work here at the uni­ver­sity of the arts, a space where we can all meet and move for­ward to get THEONESPOT we want back. i think the love thing doesn’t even need to infringe on what the do it your­self move­ment has going on right now. still not done.…..

seri­ously let f.p. help the do it your­self move­ment with things like money for spots in play­grounds in the hood. that takes real money which is what f.p. is all about (non­profit fundraiser). we on the other hand with the love thing do not really need tangable money like the do it your­self things. we need orga­ni­za­tion. peo­ple like f.p. can help with that. i do agree with what some­one said in an ear­lier com­ment, if that park on the schukyll gets build, those of us that skate down­town will be out of luck.

i wana take a sec­ond to give a humungous big ups to jesse clay­ton, zeb is right, they did that shit in a year !, my phone is get­ting a text right now about ten yards of con­crete being poured there as we speak! Honestly there is abso­lutly no need for that park on the river. take that money or por­tion raised and make parks in the neigh­bor­hoods like pops,so lit­tle kids in those areas can learn how to skate, then they can come down­town and play with the big boys like i said im work­ing on a meet­ing site.

In Short (with longer to fol­low else­where) Franklin’s Paine is the entity that funds and pro­motes free pub­lic skateparks in the Philadelphia area. Skateboard Advocacy Network (SAN) was formed by my self, Scott Kip and a few other skate­board­ers to “advo­cate for skate­board­ers through orga­nized rep­re­sen­ta­tion and com­mu­nity action.” SAN has not met in quite some time and the web site is still live. Our focal project was legal­iz­ing LOVE park. We did so much and worked so hard and received noth­ing in return. I spoke with Scott Kip a few days ago and he said he would love to meet up. skate​boar​d​ad​vo​ca​cynet​work​.org

I real­ized that sounded harsh. Working with SAN was amaz­ing and I would love to do it again. The “noth­ing in return” line was in ref­er­ence to LOVE not being legal. To be hon­est, I thought that the whole ideas was best left alone since peo­ple were skat­ing LOVE again, just like the days that made it so pop­u­lar. It was never legal, it was tol­er­ated, in waves but never legal.

i wana take a sec­ond to give a humungous big ups to jesse clay­ton, zeb is right, they did that shit in a year !, my phone is get­ting a text right now about ten yards of con­crete being poured there as we speak! Honestly there is abso­lutly no need for that park on the river. take that money or por­tion raised and make parks in the neigh­bor­hoods like pops,so lit­tle kids in those areas can learn how to skate, then they can come down­town and play with the big boys like i said im work­ing on a meet­ing site.

i wana take a sec­ond to give a humungous big ups to jesse clay­ton, zeb is right, they did that shit in a year !, my phone is get­ting a text right now about ten yards of con­crete being poured there as we speak! Honestly there is abso­lutly no need for that park on the river. take that money or por­tion raised and make parks in the neigh­bor­hoods like pops,so lit­tle kids in those areas can learn how to skate, then they can come down­town and play with the big boys like i said im work­ing on a meet­ing site.

mak­ing skat­ing legal in Love Park is not going to hap­pen. its a pub­lic park owned by the city or fair­mount park. its always been this way, some­times eas­ier, some­times harder to skate their. it goes in cycles. I think if this art museum loca­tion has been donated we should get some­thing going their. google search this park they just built in Helsinki called Micropolis, it looks amaz­ing. I doubt it was 7 mil­lion dol­lars. designed by a skate­boarder. yeah it will be a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to skate Love for a while but no one will go to it for a while and then the cops will lay off of it, then we can go back. so its what­ever. I can say for sure that if a bunch of peo­ple that skate get together they could come up with a design, I mean seri­ously we could just bring pic­tures of spots from all over the world and dupli­cate them some­what, we could do some­thing with what we have already. didn’t franklins paine get some benches from Love when the ren­o­vated it?

i wana take a sec­ond to give a humungous big ups to jesse clay­ton, zeb is right, they did that shit in a year !, my phone is get­ting a text right now about ten yards of con­crete being poured there as we speak! Honestly there is abso­lutly no need for that park on the river. take that money or por­tion raised and make parks in the neigh­bor­hoods like pops,so lit­tle kids in those areas can learn how to skate, then they can come down­town and play with the big boys like i said im work­ing on a meet­ing site.

God these things make my head explode since so many things are being addressed at the same time. Here what is going through my mind 1. Skateboarding in LOVE park will NEVER be legal, but that does not mean we have to stand for exces­sive use of force at the hands of Philadelphia Police. Guns being drawn on kids one week­end than a 12 year old boy tack­led and his face vio­lently slammed into a mar­ble ground, and one of our good friends spent the night in jail for stand­ing up for him (Brit Hawk). I will proudly take a ticket any day, but the sec­ond you push I am push­ing back. This issue needs to be addressed before some­one gets seri­ously hurt.

2. I think this debate has been filled with tons of valid ideas, opin­ions, and thoughts, but the one thing that dri­ves me nuts is this whole close minded view of spots and parks. Love is an amaz­ing spot in fact one of the best spots ever, but thats not all we have to offer not all we need. We need neigh­bor­hood spots for kids to feel com­fort­able skat­ing, and a spot for us older dudes to relax some­times. I lived in Philly my entire life, and I know we need more then one fuck­ing ille­gal park. POP’s and other parks like it will not HINDER cen­ter city skat­ing at all, and if you really believe that come talk to me and tell me what YOU have done to improve the Philly skate scene. A cou­ple jars of bondo and flat ground tre flips will only get us so far.

Jake I opened a skate­board shop in the city of Philadelphia because I love Philadelphia Skateboarding. This shop will always be here for meet­ings, and I will sup­port any pos­i­tive cause to the fullest extent. We have been hold­ing meet­ings for the Pops progress and our future DIY projects so feel free to use these walls for what­ever you need. The most impor­tant thing will never be build­ing a spot, but our ABILITY to band together and actu­ally build a community

LOVE has always been a bless­ing and a curse for Philadelphia skate­board­ing. People fought hard for a SPOT not a CITY. As soon as that Law came down we saw a new day. Teams stopped rolling through town, demos died, ads of ste­vie had palm tress in the back­ground, and bull­shit shops and com­pa­nies raked in the last chunk of Philly with hor­ri­ble Love logo decks, and t-​​shirts. The few who stayed kept there heads as high as pos­si­ble and pushed on. We need to learn from our mis­takes and put more on our com­mu­nity as a whole then one spot. Get involved build spots, throw events, have demos, skate the entire city, bring homies in from out of town, film videos, start com­pa­nies, make our voice be heard.

PlanB stinks for mak­ing those LOVE graph­ics. What a weird thing for a huge com­pany to do. They have ramps big­ger then City Hall but need to use the LOVE logo to sell boards and shirts? I know, i’m rant­ing, but they are the largest com­pany to use the LOVE logo. I hope this thread goes on foreeeeeeeeeeeever.

Philly did go under­ground after Love died out. It’s crazy, but you DON’T see pros come through here like they used too. I saw Kalis in Noc about a week or so ago, and almost shit a brick. Any addi­tion to the skate scene is gonna be detri­men­tal. Down to bon­do­ing a spot to, de-​​nobbing it…to just skat­ing it. I think EVERYONE down to shop own­ers like Steve Miller, brainiac artists like Nugget, and street sharks like Zeb are DOING. We just need a nucleus. Our opin­ions get to the same des­ti­na­tion, but from dif­fer­ent paths. Once we under­stand that, I feel that a com­mon goal can be reached like and run­away train, we’d be unstop­pable. It’s just gonna take alot of work, and patience.

Ki. Be rea­son­able here. Take every dol­lar that was spent at Bridge Spot (phase 1,2,3,and 4) and add it up. It wasn’t as cheap as you think. Go out and get some com­mu­nity sup­port and build the same exact course some­where that will NOT get bull­dozed every winter.

I was just stat­ing how I felt. You’re right about the cost of bridge spot. Each year DID add up…but it was fun nonethe­less. I live a few block away from there, and if I so much as move a park­ing block, by the end of the week, the neigh­bors move it back. Kids drink beer down there, crack­heads sleep there, shitty graf­fiti galore, you name it.…but skateboarding…not cool. You’d think with as many lit­tle skate groms in Souf Phil’s they wouldn’t mind kids down there skat­ing, but they do. As far as build­ing some­thing some­where where it WON’T get knocked down…the search continues.

Ki, you have brought up bridge spot before. It sounds like a project you can try to rally the troops and get legal­ized. I live in the neigh­bor­hood but I refuse to do grinds on plas­tic so I never really liked the ledges. However if some­thing more nor­mal was there I would go. Got an idea on how to get the com­mu­nity behind let­ting us keep stuff down there? How about a meet­ing with the Mummers? Would you be will­ing to orga­nize this sort of thing and call peo­ple? I hope so cause you bring it up all the time, like some magic “skate fairy” is going to do it for you. Just sayin’ you’ve got friends, you’ve got words. You even wrote an arti­cle about the FPSF project for Focus. Why not start small and get them to let you build just one bench…